"there are immaturities, but there are immensities"- from Bright Star (dir. Jane Campion)^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
"the fear of being wrong can keep you from being anything at all" - Nayland Blake

Sunday, March 17, 2013

ATOMS FOR PEACE

Amok

The Wire, February 2013

by Simon Reynolds

Radiohead
got their name from a Talking Heads B-side. That told you something about where
they were coming from (angsty artpunk) and it helps explain where they went (Kid A as the group’s Remain In Light peak, subsequently
backed away from). Atoms For Peace’s name comes from a track on Thom Yorke’s The Eraser. That also tells you something.
Although widely characterised as a
supergroup, Atoms isn’t a meeting of equals. It’s a Yorke solo album in disguise,
the singer and Nigel Godrich (Radiohead’s producer since forever) in total
control.

The scenario
here is actually slightly reminiscent of Remain
In Light: Byrne & Eno style, Yorke
and Godrich reworked a mountain of material generated during a three-day jam
session with Red Hot Chilli Peppers bassist Flea, percussionist Mauro Refosco,
and drummer Joey Waronker (who’s worked with Beck). Those musicians had
originally come together as the backing group for Yorke’s short US tour of The
Eraser. Another Remain echo: the idea for the project hatched during a drunken
evening listening to Fela Kuti at Flea’s Los Angeles home, where the muso buddies
grooved on what Yorke has described as “that idea of trance-ing out.”

In ye olden
days, the supergroup ideal entailed distinctive instrumental voices coming
together to make sweet music at the convergence of their discrete histories.
But listening to Amok, there’s absolutely
no way you can tell Flea is involved (arguably just as well, given his
slap-happy bass signature).Flea, Waronker
and Refosco are even less discernible presences as musicians than all those
prog virtuosos on Eno’s solo records forced out of their comfort zones by the
balding one’s oblique strategems. Characterlessness
seems to have been an end result actively sought by Godrich and Yorke during
the two years of restructuring and studio-morphing they applied to the raw
material generated by their content-provider pals. As Godrich told one
interviewer, “one of the things we were most excited about was ending up with a
record where you weren't quite sure where the human starts and the machine
ends."

Once upon
a time that might have been a provocative mission statement, a productive goal.The severance of musical sounds from their origin
in embodied human actions, the privileging of treatments and production
processes over playing: these did indeed seem like radical propositions when mooted
in the early Nineties context of UK postrock outfits like Seefeel, Disco
Inferno, Techno Animal. They still seemed fairly exciting and promising circa Kid A/Amnesiac in 2001. But in
2013?Virtually the entire radioscape of
contemporary music is constructed on these terms, from the ProTooled illusions
of modern rock to the Adorno-dystopia of AutoTune dancepop, with assorted
middlebrow options (Muse, TV On the Radio, et al) in between.When the methodology is so widespread and
normative, as to be unremarkable, then what radicality can really be claimed
for “cyborg music”?

Sometimes the inbetween places are the most interesting zones in which to
operate. But sometimes it just makes for neither fish nor fowl. Godrich, again:
“This is the eternal battle with Thom. He's like 'I really want to make a dance
record. But I have to sing on it, or nobody's going to fucking care." Amok, apparently, “is his
compromise”.Well, exactly: you said it,
Nige.The cross-purpose impulses (dance
versus song, machine versus human) generate neither thrilling friction nor
intriguing irresolution, but a smoothed-out stalemate.Residues of the desire to make physically
involving music persist:nervous
percussion passim (presumably derived from Refosco),the energetic boppy beat on “Dropped” (think Outkast’s “Hey Ya” but with a scowl).But again and again, rhythmic thrust is
subdued by Yorke’s all-enveloping vocals.He is simply not a particularly rhythmic singer.His style, a sort of postpunk bel canto that
owes virtually nothing to black music or even to American music, is highly
original but it is suited to long aching melody lines.Draped across the music, Yorke’s harrowed
croon invites you to wilt into his sonorous folds of melancholy mood-texture. Now and again on Amok he attempts a more
groove-oriented, syncopated delivery, sounding almost American on “Stuck
Together” and even a tiny bit like “black”-era Joni Mitchell on “Judge Jury
Executioner”. The rhythms on that track suggest handclaps and fingerclicks, but
thanks to overdone echo, the ultimate effect is “Anglican Gospel”.

But overall, there’s little respite from the canopied dolour of his singing.Blending into the pillowy synths, Yorke’s smudged
enunciation seems to actively discourage attention to the lyrics. “Default”,
the single, has the sharpest definition: there’s real crunch and sizzle to the
rhythm, the hook is insidious,and certain
lines snap into focus (“the will is strong/the flesh is weak”,“I avoid your gaze,” “ I’ve made my bed/I lie
in it”) while remaining emotionally opaque. I’ve never fully understood the term
“passive-aggressive” but that feels like it might be the place Amok is coming from.As with most of Yorke’s song writing, in
Radiohead and solo, the terrain is anomie, hollowness, uncomfortable numbness,
political-is-personal unease. But the place where bleak and oblique meet is
over-familiar territory for him: at this point the most startling and powerful
thing Yorke could do is come out and say something directly, even crudely, like
the Lennon of Plastic Ono Band or even Some Time in New York City.

Ironically
titled, surely (since it never does run amok; in fact it feels more like a
plushly padded cell), this album is not a completely barren listen. There are
plenty of good bits: the backwash of looped and processed murmurs on
“Unless”,the hornet-muezzin synth part
that rears up on “Reverse Running”, the melted glimmer of instrumentalized
vocal on the title track. But they never quite add up.Listening, I found myself repeatedly wondering:
what is this record for? You can’t
dance to it. The song-structures forestall the full-blown disorientation of
experimental electronic music.It
doesn’t offer solace or healing resonance (the lyrics are at once private and
depersonalized, stripped of concrete detail).Amok is neither one thing nor
the one other, but not in a way that plays challenging havoc with categories or
expectations.In the end, it’s another cautious
portion of well-made, moderately-experimental not-quite-rock.

Friday, March 15, 2013

MANTRONIX, Music Madness (10 Records)Melody Maker, December 6th 1986.

by Simon Reynolds

Mantronix don’t quite fit. Hip hop is getting to
be more and more of an assault, more and more hyper-compressed
and minimal in its search for harder and higher hits. But
Mantronix are loosening up their music, bringing in a suppleness
and textural luxury. Hip hop daily exceeds new levels of
megalomaniac viciousness. But Mantronix are gradually squeezing
the SELF out of their music, letting the music stand on
its own madness.

Compare what Mantronix are doing with a track that
represents some kind of zenith in current hip hop
trends--“The Manipulator” by Mixmaster Gee and The Turntable Orchestra
(off Electro 14). Here skill on the turntables becomes a
twisted, bloated metaphor for omnipotence. The voice shoves
itself RIGHT IN YOUR FACE--you can practically feel the spittle,
smell the breath. It’s a voice intoxicated with power, quaking with
rage. MC Tee from Mantronix, in comparison, has a refreshingly
adolescent voice, almost sweet--words are slurred, there’s the
tiniest suggestion of a lisp.

“Manipulator” style hip hop is given its impetus by being focused
on the tyrannical charisma of the rapper, but with Mantronix the
raps seem almost superfluous. There are several instrumentals. With most
hip hop the very sound of the music is a MASSIVE COCK waving about
in
your face. Mantronix erase every trace of the pelvis, every last ditch
of humanism in hip hop. Their music isn’t weighted down by the
heaviness of masculinity, but glides, skips, even frisks at times, rather
than thuggishly stomping us weaklings underfoot. Mantronix sound
disembodied, dislocated, out-of-it.

They are far out, a long way from firm ground. Mantronik marshals
a host of uprooted fragments and abducted ghosts into a dance. He
thieves indiscriminately, without prejudice, enlisting anything
from Benny Goodman to The Old Grey Whistle Test theme tune.
On “We Control the Dice” they even indulge in self-kleptomania (or perhaps
simple thrift is at work), re-using the bass motif from “Bassline”.

Their greatest influence, though, is European electropop--the
scrubbed, spruce, pristine textures and metronomic precision
of Kraftwerk and Martin Rushent’s Human League. While the brainy British
bands of the day dedicate themselves to noisy guitars, it’s up to Mantronix
(and House music) to uphold the spirit of 1981, to cherish the bass sound
and the electronic percussion of “Sound of the Crowd” as a lost future of pop.

They have moments close to wildness-“Big Band B-Boy” commandeers
a jungle of percussion--but I prefer it when Mantronix sound stealthy.
“Scream,” with its curiously muted delivery of a party-up lyric
(the word “scream” is almost whispered) is as eerie as Suicide lullabies
like “I Remember” or “Cheree”. The title track has a roaming, furtive
sense of space, the phrase “music madness” sampled, stretched and
melted into a series of beautiful belches. Best of all is the closing
“Megamix”, in which everything you’ve been listening to for the last
half-hour is regurgitated inside out and upside down, flashing before
your ears like a drowned, garbled life. Sublime pandemonium.

Music Madness is the kind of music you’d hoped The
Art of Noise would go on to make after “Close (to the Edit)”.
Fleshless, soulless, faceless and fantastic.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Morrissey's
recent flirtation with jingoism really shouldn't have been that
surprising. Insularity has always been his thing, from his nostalgic
resentment of foreign/futuristic influences on English culture, to his
denial of the truth that "no man is an island". For me, even more
revealing than the "black and white will never mix" bit in the Q
interview, was Morrissey's admission that he'd taken Ecstasy, twice, and
each time by himself. The first time was, apparently, the most amazing
moment in his life: he looked in the mirror and saw "someone who was
extremely attractive".

Now, along with freaky-dancing, E
promotes empathy, tactile affection and intimacy. The idea of Mozzer
using the "interesting drug" to bond more closely with himself is so
tragi-comical, so perfectly attuned to his image and his pathology, it's
not true. In fact, I've begun to wonder if it really isn't true, but
rather a tale spun by Moz as part of a strategic policy of
disinformation. Because Morrissey knows that his aesthetic, his career,
his financial future, depend on the idea that he is unloveable and
unloved. He has to keep on insisting that he's charmless and untouched
by human hand, in order to sustain his appeal to his mostly
heterosexual, love-lorn following.

These feelings were amplified when I read the US Morri-zine Sing Your Life.
In North America, the Mozzer cult is bigger than ever (amazingly,
these kids were hooked by the lame solo stuff rather than The Smiths),
and Sing is just one of a dozen, including one computer 'zine. By
far the most interesting thing about Morrissey now is the devout ardour
of his fans. S.Y.L. makes it clear that their main concern is
strategies for getting onstage in order to kiss and hug their idol. So
there are letters from readers thanking S.Y.L. for showing that
Morrissey "is not untouchable", that "with unrelenting determination,
our dream will one day be realised". There are innumerable testimonials
of what The Moment was like. "The most emotional scenes I have ever
seen... I just wanted to stay there forever", "I saw God coming down",
"a lord up there, his music savagely attacked me", "Morrissey is my
life; Morrissey is my death", "the utmost feeling of ecstasy",
"Morrissey makes reality seem unreal".

I could never
dismiss these people as sad individuals, but their stories make me sad. I
can remember living that adolescent intensity, where the love you owe
yourself or other flesh-and-blood humans seems like it can only be
expressed through an idol or an Ideology. For these fans, touching
Morrissey is an electrifying sacrament in which all their repression and
passion is orgasmically released. Reading S.Y.L., it's also
clear that it's crucial for the fans to believe that Morrissey is as
shy, awkward, and starved of touch as they are. What's unique about Moz
is the way he's codified the themes of loneliness and fan projection in
his work, and exposed the circularity and ultimate sterility of the
syndrome. He must know that his teen belief that he was engaged in "an
absolute tangible love affair" with his idols, leads nowhere (unless
they're all supposed to become idols, with fans/phantom lovers of their
own - the argument of the song "Sing Your Life"?). A Pied Piper of teen
angst, he's knowingly led his fans into the cul-de-sac of loving only
the pristine images of distant (or dead) icons, rather than risking the
messy compromises of real-life close encounters. What makes Morrissey
such an increasingly grotesque phenomeon is the age gap between idol and
fans; his audience hasn't grown with him because his art hasn't grown
up. Instead his flock is endlessly re-stocked with each year's harvest
of sensitive souls.

You can't live 'here', and the brighter writers on Sing Your Life know
it. Hagop Janoyan observes how all Moz's US fans are in their late
teens, how the Smiths-era fans have moved on, and worries that he too
will out-grow his ardour and become a member of "the Ordinary World".
Mark Sirard writes in "The Morrissey Equation" that "it is our desire
to bridge this distance that keeps us in a state of eternal attraction".
Fandom is an ultra-intense state of suspension and deferral that allows
the fan to live in the ideal, unrequited but thus never dis-illusioned.
But to give up illusions needn't mean a come-down to banality, it can
mean affirming limits and finding an object worthy of your passion.
Perhaps Hagop should start a spinter zine called Start Your Life.

BONUS QUOTES FROM THE MORRISSEY INTERVIEW IN Q

On racism and multiculturalism.

"I
don't want to sound horrible or pessimistic but I don't really think,
for instance, black people and white people will ever really get on or
like each other. I don't really think they ever will. The French will
never like the English. The English will never like the French. That
tunnel will collapse."

On the death of Englishness

"It's a part of my overall psyche. It's not unique to [Your Arsenal].
I supposed a few years ago I would have spoken more morosely about this
great, dying tradition. Well, now it has died. This is the debris,
now.... I don't want to be European. I want England to remain an
island. I think part of the greatness of the past has been the fact that
England has been an island. I don't want the tunnel. I don't want
sterling to disappear. I don't want British newscasters to talk in
American accents. I don't want continental television.

On Ecstasy

"I've
taken it a couple of times. The first time I took it was the most
astonishing moment of my life. Because - and I don't want to sound truly
pathetic - I looked in the mirror and saw somebody very, very
attractive. Now, of course, this was the delusion of the drug, and it
wears off. But it was astonishing for that hour, or for however long it
was, to look into the mirror and really, really like what came back at
me. Now even though I had that wonderful experience, and it was a
solitary experience - there was nobody else present - I'm not actually
interested in drugs of any kind."

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

KRAUTROCK Melody Maker, July 1996

by Simon Reynolds

The way out sounds of Krautrock are currently way "in". The
evidence: a deluge of CD reissues, the publication of Julian Cope's
enthralling pocket-size handbook "Krautrocksampler", a comeback LP by
Faust, and a legion of contemporary bands, from Stereolab to Tortoise to
Mouse On Mars, pledging fealty in word and deed. There's even a
Krautrock club in London called Kosmische, which in turn inspired The
Face to run a piece--complete with comically contrived and completely
bogus photo-tableau of foxy young things grooving to Harmonia--on how
the hippest thing in modern music was a bunch of aged German hippies.

So why Krautrock, and why now? Maybe it's simply because
contemporary guitarpop on both sides of the Atlantic is unusually lame
and conservative, and Krautrock beckons as a beacon indicating just how
much can be done with the basic rock format of guitar, bass and drums.
Seizing the possibilities of the recording studio, the German kosmische
bands of the early '70s produced results as otherworldly and
rhythmically sophisticated as today's "sampladelic" music (techno, drum
& bass, hip hop, ambient etc). Today's Britpop and American
corporate grunge'n' punk are overtly pre-psychedelic and
anti-experimental, merging playsafe 1966-meets-1978 power-pop aesthetics
with radio-friendly production. Krautrock--as the missing link between
the tumult of the late '60s and the anti-rockist vanguard of 1979 (PiL
etc)--is therefore a crucial resource for any contemporary band who
resists the reductive notion that (pre-psych) Beatles + Buzzcocks *= the
Essence, the Way and the Truth, for Ever and Ever.

Immerse yourself in Krautrock--and this is the immersive, engulfing
music par excellence--and you'll find a paradox at the music's heart: a
combination of absolute freedom and absolute discipline. Krautrock is
where the over-reaching ambition and untethered freakitude of late '60s
acid rock is checked and galvanised by a proto-punk minimalism.
Krautrock bands like Can, Neu! and Faust unleashed music of immense
scale that miraculously avoided prog-rock's bombastics, its cult of
virtuosity-for-virtuosity's-sake. Where progressive rock boasted "look
at me, look how fast my fingers can go", Krautrock beseeched "look! look
how VAST we can go'. Or as Can's Michael Karoli put it: "We weren't
into impressing people, just caressing them'

Alongside Tim Buckley's "Starsailor", Miles Davis' circa"On The
Corner", Yoko Ono circa "Fly", Krautrock was true fusion, merging
psychedelic rock with funk groove, jazz improvisation, Stockhausen-style
avant-electronics and ethnic flava in a way that avoided the
self-congratulatory, dilettante eclecticism that marred even the best of
the '70s jazz-rock bands, like Weather Report. Krautrock's primary
inputs, and urgency, came from late '60s rock: Velvet Underground's
mesmerising mantras, Hendrix's pyrotechnique, Syd Barrett-era Pink
Floyd's chromatic chaos, plus dashes of West Coast folkadelic rock and
the studio-centric experiments of Brian Wilson and the later Beatles.
Equally significant is what they didn't draw on, namely the blues-bore
purism sired by Cream and the Stones.

Tweaking this Anglo-American legacy, the German bands added a vital
distance (coming to rock'n'roll as an alien import, they were able to
make it even more alien), and they infused it with a German character
that's instantly audible but hard to tag. A combination of Dada, LSD and
Zen resulted in a dry absurdist humour that could range from zany
tomfoolery to a sort of sublime nonchalance, a lightheaded but never
lighthearted ease of spirit. Although they occasionally dipped their
toes into psychedelia's darkside (the madness that claimed psychonauts
such as Syd Barrett, Roky Erikson or Moby Grape's Skip Spence), what's
striking about most Krautrock is how affirmative it is, even at its most
demented. This peculiar serene joy and aura of pantheistic celebration
is nowhere more evident than in the peak work of Can, Faust and Neu!

KRAUTROCK: THE CANON

If the triumvirate of Can/Faust/Neu! has gotten so cliched as a hip
reference point, it's for a good reason. Despite being quite dissimilar
and lacking any kind of fraternal, comradely feelings towards each
other, Can, Faust and Neu! are the unassailable centre of Krautrock's
pantheon-- its Dante/Shakespeare/Milton, or Beatles/Stones/Dylan, if you
will.

CAN's core was a quartet of lapsed avant-garde and free jazz
musicians (bassist Holger Czukay, guitarist Michael Karoli, keyboardist
Irmin Schmidt and drummer Jaki Leibezeit) who--blown away by the VU and
the Beatles' "I Am The Walrus"-- decided rock was where it was at. Can
were the most funky and improvisational of the Krautrock bands.
Recording in their own studio in a Cologne castle, they jammed all day,
then edited the juiciest chunks of improv into coherent compositions.
This was similar to the methodology used by Miles Davis and producer Teo
Macero. As Can's band's resident Macero, Czukay deployed two-track
recording and a handful of mikes to achieve wonders of proto-ambient
spatiality, shaming today's lo-fi bands. Can's early sound--spartan,
crisp-and-dry trance-rock, like the VU circa 'White Light' but with a
smokin' rhythm section--peaked with the 15 minute mindquake of "Mother
Sky". As the influence of James Brownian motion kicked in, Can began to
fuse 'head' and 'booty', atmosphere and groove, like nobody else save
Miles Davis. After the shamanic avant-funk of "Tago Mago" and the
brittle angst-funk of "Ege Bamyasi", Can's music plunged into the
sunshine with "Future Days", "Soon Over Babaluma" and "Landed", their
mid-'70s 'Gaia trilogy'. A kind of mystic materialism quivers and pulses
inside these ethnofunkadelic groovescapes and ambient oases, from the
moon-serenade "Come Sta, La Luna" to the fractal funk and chaos theorems
of "Chain Reaction/Quantum Physics". This is music that wordlessly but
eloquently rejoices in Mother Nature's bounty and beauty.

Despite an almost utter absence of input from black music, NEU! were
probably the closest to Can, in their sheer hypno-groove power and
shared belief that "restriction is the mother of invention" (Holger
Czukay's minimal-is-maximal credo). Devoid of funk or swing, Neu! is all
about compulsive propulsion. Klaus Dinger was an astoundingly
inventive, endlessly listenable drummer who worked magic within the
confines of a rudimentary four-to-the-floor rock beat. Together with
guitarist Michael Rother, he invented motorik, a metronomic, pulsating
rhythm that instils a sublime sensation of restrained exhiliration, like
gliding cruise-control down the freeway into a future dazzling with
promise. That 'dazzle' comes from Rother's awesomely original
guitarwork, all chiming radiance and long streaks'n' smears of
tone-colour. Something like Germany's very own Television, Neu! bridged
Byrdsy psychedelia and punk. They also did ambient texturescapes (e.g.
the oceanside idyll "Leb' Wohl") and weird noise (after fucking up their
recording budget, they filled the second side of 'Neu! 2" with sped-up
and slowed-down versions of an earlier single!). But it's motorik
excursions like "Hallogallo", ""Fur Immer" and "Isi" that constitute
Neu's great legacy, one that's only now being fully exploited.

FAUST
similarly combined proto-punk mess-thetic with acid-rock's galactic
grandeur. But instead of Neu! streamlined symmetry, Faust oscillated
wildly between filthy, fucked-up noise and gorgeous pastoral melody,
between yowling antics and exquisitely-sculpted sonic objets d'art.
Above all, Faust were maestros of incongruity; their albums are riddled
with jarring juxtapositions and startling jumpcuts between styles.
Heterogeneity was their anti-essence. This cut-up Dada side of Faust was
explored to the hilt on 'The Faust Tapes', a collage album of some 26
segments, and it's a methodology revisited on their brand-new comeback
LP album "Rien", which was assembled by producer Jim O'Rourke using live
tapes of the band's recent reunion tour of America. But for all their
avant-garde extremities, Faust were also great songwriters, scatttering
amid the zany chaos such gems as the bittersweet psychedelic love-song
"Jennifer" and the tres third Velvets Album acid blues of "It's A Bit Of
A Pain".

Once you've immersed yourself in the best, what about the rest? ASH
RA TEMPEL took The Stooges' downered wah-wah rock ("We Will Fall",
"Ann', "Dirt") way way out into the mystic (but beware guitarist Manuel
Gottsching's subsequent New Age dotage as Ash Ra **). AMON DUUL II were the
most baroque and bombastic of the krucial Kraut kontenders: imagine Led
Zep produced by John Cale with Nico on vocals and a crate of magic
mushrooms to hand. They had a fab line in lysergic song titles too:
"Halluzination Guillotine", "Dehypnotised Toothpaste", "A Short Stop At
The Transylvanian Brain Surgery". Their estranged sister-band AMON DUUL I
pursued a similarly drug-burned rock, but were more primitivistic and
sloppy. After Can/Faust/Neu!, CLUSTER were probably the most innovative
and ahead-of-their time. After a spell as the purely avant-garde
Kluster, the two-man soundlab of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter
Moebius hit their stride with the mesmeric dronescapes of 'Cluster II'
and "Cluster '71". Later, they traded in their armoury of FX-pedals and
guitar-loops for synths, knocked out a bunch of bewitching albums with
Brian Eno, and chalked up a mammoth oeuvre (as Cluster, but also solo
and as Roedelius and Moebius) with the odd gem lurking amid much New Age
mush. Hooking up with Neu!'s Michael Rother, the duo also recorded as
HARMONIA, producing two albums worth of serene and soul-cleansing
proto-electronica. Meanwhile Rother's estranged partner Dinger formed LA
DUSSELDORF, peddling a pleasing punk-rock take on the Neu!-rush. POPOL
VUH rival Cluster for creative incontinence; their vast, diverse
discography ranges from meditational, Mediaevalist reveries to
primordial, percussive freak-outs.

Although they were only "rock" for an instant, KRAFTWERK ought to be
mentioned around about here. For three fascinating albums (and an
interesting prequel as ORGANISATION), Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider
jumbled the New York minimalist school (La Monte Young, John Cage, Steve
Reich etc) with German avant-electronics (Stockhausen). Then they
staked everything on the idea that the synthesiser was the future, and
won, becoming godfathers of Eurodisco, New Romanticism, Electro and
Techno-Rave, not to mention a big influence on Bowie's "Low" and
Spacemen 3's "Playing With Fire". 'Kraftwerk: the most important band of
the 1970s' -- Discuss. TANGERINE DREAM followed a similar trajectory,
shifting from their early transcendental rock (which produced four
terrific albums) to synth-based proto-trance tedium ***. Early T. Dream
associate KLAUS SCHULTZE also did a few interesting albums of early
electronica noir.

Featuring Schultze and Ash Ra's Gottsching, COSMIC JOKERS/COURIERS
were something of a Krautrock supergroup; their six elpees of
hallucinogen-addled studio-shenanigans range from Gong-style buffoonery
to Hawkind-like hurtles into the remotest reaches of der kosmos. Also
treading a tightrope between sublime and ridiculous were BRAINTICKET and
GURU GURU; both erred on the side of prog but still afford a fair
amount of amusement.

KRAUTROCK: THE LEGACY

In their own day, the German kosmische bands were hip but not
especially influential. Oddballs in Britain and America took similar
sources as their launch-pad, but generally ended up in less appealing
places (e.g. Henry Cow and the Canterbury school of jerky
jazz-influenced art-rock). In the early '70s, only the Eno-era Roxy
Music, Stooges' offshoot Destroy All Monsters, and Robert Fripp/Brian
Eno's guitar-loop albums ("No Pussyfooting" etc) really picked up on
German ideas. But in the immediate aftermath of 1977-and-all-that, bands
were looking for ways to expand on punk's sonic fundamentalism without
bloating up into prog-rock indulgence, and Krautrock provided a host of
pointers for the post-punk vanguard. Can especially offered a fertile
source of rhythmic ideas, not just for avant-funkateers like PiL and Pop
Group, but also The Fall. Their early anthem "Repetition" ("repetition
in the music and we're never gonna lose it") expressed Holger Czukay's
creed of 'self-restriction" in word and sound; Mark E. Smith would later
pen "I Am Damo Suzuki" as a tribute to Can's second and most barmy
vocalist.

The pan-global panoramic trance-dance of Talking Heads' "Remain In
Light" owed a lot to "Soon Over Babaluma", and yet more sincere flattery
came in the form of David Byrne and "Remain" producer Eno's "My Life In
The Bush of Ghosts" (1981). Its use of ethnic vocal samples was
unfavourably compared with Czukay's recent "Movies", whose "Persian
Love" recontextualised an Iranian ballad; in actual fact, Holger had got
there 12 years earlier with "Canaxis", which used Vietnamese
boat-woman's song! Meanwhile, the then freshly reissued Faust were
impacting the burgeoning "industrial" scene (Cabaret Voltaire, Zoviet
France, This Heat, Nurse With Wound, etc), their collage aesthetic
paralleling the in-vogue cut-up techniques of William Burroughs.

In the '90s, Krautmania blew up big time. First, there was American
lo-fi: Pavement, Thinking Fellers Union, Mercury Rev, F/i, Truman's
Water (who covered not one but TWO Faust songs), Soul-Junk. Then came
the international drone-rock network (Flying Saucer Attack, Labradford,
the Dead C/Gate, Flies Inside The Sun, Third Eye Foundation), and the
neo-Neu! motorik maniacs (Stereolab, Trans-Am, Quickspace Supersport),
and the nouveau kosmonauts (Sabalon Glitz, Telstar Ponies, Cul De Sac)
and the post-rock groove collectives (Laika, Tortoise, Pram, Moonshake,
Rome), and even the odd art-tekno outfit (Mouse On Mars). Inevitably,
the referencing is getter more arcane: Cluster & Eno with
Labradford, Popol Vuh with Flying Saucer and Sabalon, Cosmic Jokers with
Telstar....

Why is the Krautrock legacy being embraced so fervently, at this
precise point in time? Firstly, Krautrock is one of the great eras of
guitar-reinvention. Expanding on the innovations of Hendrix, Syd
Barrett, the VU, etc, the Krautrock bands explored the electric guitar's
potential as source of sound-in-itself. Fed through effects-pedals and
the mixing desk, the guitar ceased to be a riff-machine and verged on an
analog synthesiser, i.e. a generator of timbre and tone-colour. As
such, the Krauts anticipated the soundpainting and texturology of
today's post-rock, while still retaining the rhythmic thrust of
rock'n'roll.

Second, Krautrock brought into focus an idea latent in rock, from Bo
Diddley to the Stooges to the Modern Lovers: that the rhythmic essence
of rock music, what made it different from jazz, was a kind of machinic
compulsion. Pitched somewhere between Kraftwerk's man-machine rigour and
James Brown's sex-machine sweat, bands like Can and Neu! created
grooves that fused the luscious warmth of flesh-and-blood funk with the
cold precision of techno. There was a spiritual aspect to all this, sort
of Zen and the Art of Motorik Maintenance: the idea that true joy in
life isn't liberation from work but exertion, fixation, a trance-like
state of immersion in the process itself, regardless of outcome. Holger
Czukay declared: "Repetition is like a machine... If you can get aware
of the life of a machine then you are definitely a master ... [machines]
have a heart and soul... they are living beings'." . Taking this idea
of the 'soft machine' or 'desiring machine' even further, Neu! created a
new kind of rhythm for rock, bridging the gap between rock'n'roll's
syncopation and disco's four-to-the-floor metronomics. As Stereolab's
Tim Gane says, "Neu!'s longer tracks are far closer to the nature of
house and techno than guitar rock."

Beyond all this, Krautrock is simply fabulous music, a dizzy
kaleidoscope of crazily mixed up and incompatible emotions and
sensations (wonder, poignancy, nonchalance, tenderness, derangement), an
awesome affirmation of possibility that inevitably appeals in an age
when guitar-based music appears to be contracting on a weekly basis.
Listeners are turning to it, not as a nostalgia-inducing memento of some
wilder, more daring golden age they never lived through, but as a
treasure trove of hints and clues as to what can be done right here,
right now. Krautrock isn't history, but a living testament that there's
still so far to go.

****

NOTES FROM 2013

* No slight intended to the very wonderful Buzzcocks (whose Shelley was a Krautrock fan and it shows in some of the later B-cocks B-sides, plus Neu-y side project The Tiller Boys w/ Eric Random, plus his pre-Buzz solo album, the all electronic Sky Yen). And no slight to the pre-psych Beatles either. But definite slight to those who think music should have never evolved beyond 1966 and 1978.

** Come to have quite high regard and fondness for the late Seventies Manuel Gottsching and Ash Ra (had I even heard them properly when I wrote this?), in fact I probably prefer the Inventions for Guitar and New Age of Earth and Belle Alliance etc stuff to Ash Ra Tempel circa Join Inn.... it's on the way to the untouchable sublimity of E2-E4.

*** Again, have a kinder opinion of the Phaedra-onwards Tangerine Dream plus Froese solo albums... and a substantially higher estimation of Klaus Schulze. The big ommission here is Conrad Schnitzler. Should also have had more to say about Cluster, especially the sublime Zuckerzeit. But you know, in those days you had to pay for music, remember? And also, Melody Maker word-counts, which I was pushing to the absolute limit with this double-pager.

**** Originally there was a side-bar with a mini-interview with David Keenan, then of Telstar Ponies, representing current bands influenced by K-rock. But the MM editor cut it for space. Shame as he had some interesting stuff to say.

by Simon ReynoldsMarginal in its own time, Krautrock can now be seen to have invented the future we currently inhabit. Can's pan-global avant-funk anticipated many of the moves made by sampladelic dance genres like trip hop, ethnotechno and ambient jungle; Kraftwerk and Neu!'s motorik rhythms paved the way for trance techno and trance rock; Faust and Cluster's drone-ological experiments contained the germs of lo-fi, post-rock and isolationism. The boom in Krautrock reissues offers a great opportunity to go back and hear this future's birth-pangs. Easily the most exciting of the current spate of reissues are the three albums Kraftwerk recorded between 1970-73, prior to their global pop smash "Autobahn". "Kraftwerk 1", "Kraftwerk 2" and "Ralf and Florian" (all Germanofon) are fascinating because you can hear both where the band are headed (techno) and the experimental tradition from which they gradually extricated themselves (late '60s New York avant-gardism). Despite the fact that its robotic riff is played on a flute rather than a synth, "Ruckzuck" prophesises the hypnotic rush of "Trance Europe Express" and "Tour De France"; the Elysian electro-pastoralism of "Klingklang" looks ahead to the heavenly shimmerscapes of "Neon Lights", or even Spacemen 3's "Playing With Fire". Elsewhere, Kraftwerk's avant-classical and psychedelic roots are showing: there's John Cage-like gamelan chimes, clusters of woozy guitar-harmonics and droopy, almost Hawaian-soudingbottleneck-glissandos, echo-chamber freak-outs, Beach Boys/barbershop harmonies and even Byrdsy backwards-guitar.

Krautrock's ancestral links (via the Velvet Underground) to New York's school of drone-minimalism were spelled out when Faust hooked up with Tony Conrad, who'd played (alongside John Cale) in La Monte Young's legendary if little heard "dream music" ensemble. The result was the 1972 LP "Outside The Dream Syndicate", now reissued by Table of The Elements: three twenty-minute-plus tracks of magnificent mantric monotony, with Conrad's severe violin rasping across Faust's strict and symettrical rhythm section. Don't expect Faust's kooky wit or surreal caprices: "Outside The Dream Syndicate" is an essay in the Zen-power of repetition andrestriction. If it's Faust's daft side you're after, check out "The Faust Concerts Vol. 1" and "Vol. 2" (both Table of the Elements), which document the band's '90s reformation, alternating between a pointless 'Greatest Hits' revue and 'old-Dadaist-farts-at-play' cacophony. Still, Faust have a brand new studio LP out later this year, produced by Steve Albini and Jim O'Rourke, which should be at very least intriguing.

Anyone interested in tripped-out weirdshit should hunt down the awesome "Cluster II" (Tempel). Cluster--the two-man sound-laboratory of Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius-- deployed treated, processed and looped guitars to weave drone-tapestries that seem to waver, bucklee and crinkle before your ears, like the sonic equivalent of Op Art. Later, Cluster went synth, collaborated with Brian Eno, and dwindled into sporadically interesting but increasingly New Agey solo careers. That said, their brand-new, percussion-oriented LP "One Hour" (Gyroscope) is actually well worth a listen. Back in the mid-70's, Roedelius and Moebius hooked up with Michael Rother of Neu! to form Harmonia, whose second LP "Deluxe" (Bebe) has just been reissued. Harmonia's aura of serene exultation is actually closer to Neu!'s gliding propulsion than Cluster's locked-groove claustrophobia. With its twinkling Rother guitars and naively pretty, early Orchestral Manoeuvres melodiosness, "Deluxe" is like some weird fusion of kosmic rock and Test Card muzak.

Of the latest bunch of Can-related reissues, the most interesting solo item is "Canaxis" (Spoon/Mute), a 1968/69 collaboration between Holger Czukay and Rolf Dammers that consists of two side-long "acoustic sound-paintings". The title track and "Boat-Woman Song" (which is based around tape-loops of haunting Vietnamese folk music) are pioneering examples of ethnological sampling. Much later came Jon Hassell with his "Fourth World" music, Brian Eno and David Byrne's "My Life In The Bush of Ghosts", and contemporary ethnodelic magpies such as Loop Guru, Trans-Global and Jah Wobble. Once again, those crafty Krauts got there ahead of the rest.